Author's note:
This is a rewrite of the story N21.
A lot has changed, although the idea is much the same. I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter 1.1

"Sis, you need to try it, at the very least.”

We were in Carla’s lab, and she was showing me a belt buckle that was quite flashy. It looked like something that would have been worn by the ancient singer, Elvis Presley.

“Why would I wish to experience the memories of a madman?”

“He saw himself differently than we did, Rose.”

“I rest my case.” I shook my head. “He killed everyone on Earth, and I’m supposed to be sympathetic and see how he saw himself?”

“He didn't kill everyone. He died a long time before the missiles hit. Fredrik and Paula launched them."

I was furious. “Carla,” I said in a soft and menacing voice, “Paula is our sister, and you stand there accusing her of genocide?”

“That’s not what happened.”

"So, what did happen?”

Carla had been on the ship when it left the Earth, and I had hoped that she gained some insight into her hero, but it seemed that not much had changed.

“Have you ever taken a minute to consider that maybe you were the ones who were wrong?”

I stared at her, completely unsure of how to respond. We were in space, speeding through the galaxy, because of what Amos Goodwin had done. My sister was trying to convince me that Amos was a nice guy, with only the best interests of the human race at heart. I looked at that face, so much like mine, hoping to find something that said she was joking or mad. Nothing seemed apparent.

“Okay, Rose. You wouldn't trust Amos. I can understand that, but he's not here. Can you trust me? Do you think I'd try to get you to do something like this if I didn't have a good reason?"

She was seated on a lab stool, and I was looking down at her. I realized that somewhere in my shock, I had stood. I slowly sat back down, considering.

I remembered playing with her when she was a little girl. I had reached seventy-three years old by the time my parents had her. Our elder sister, Paula, was about the same amount older than me. Somewhere in her teens, she had become an unfailing champion of Amos after he had become the leader of our government.

Finally, I agreed to experience the memories.

Carla placed the garish belt buckle on the counter, then stepped away. I moved over to the counter and stopped, terrified at what this thing signified. I slowly reached out, but I couldn't touch it. I brought my hand back to my side and found myself dizzy. I knew I was silly, but I couldn't imagine seeing what this monster had in his head. Why was my sister so calm about it?

We had come up with the idea for the crystals as a method of storing our memories. With the advancement in nanobots to keep a person healthy, basically forever, there was not enough room in a person's brain to hold all the memories they may experience. They stored memories in their crystalline matrix, so even after a person died, their memories lived on.

I sensed her come up behind me and place her hand gently on my shoulder. I was crying, and she urged me to sit down on the stool. I did not want to know what made that insane person do what he had done, but I also wanted to show my sister that I loved and trusted her.

Slowly, I moved my right fingers to the thing. As I gazed at the crystals, they shifted color, as they all did when they were active. There was a black fog that swirled through the dominant red, as if something evil was there, waiting to envelop the lifeblood of anyone who dared touch it.

On my right wrist, I wore my crystals in a bracelet that shone in their own colors, completely different than his. They were emerald green, turquoise, and cobalt blue with a red swirl that moved slowly through the other colors.

I took a deep breath and extended my index finger. It brushed the crystal.

My entire world turned on end as I seemed to fall into an incredibly deep gorge with scenes from Amos’ life playing out on either side. I landed on my back, and it seemed as if the wind was knocked out of me.

I came around slowly. I stood up and looked around. It seemed that I was still in a dark hole, with no way out. I could see my body, but I didn’t know where any light was coming from.

The walls around me were now a featureless black. Not some black material, rather just… black. There was no way to describe it. I reached out, and couldn't tell how far I had to move my hand to touch it. I supposed that if I went far enough, my hand would contact it, but I didn't want to. I felt that the blackness was evil, plain and simple.

I wanted out, and I tried to move my hand away from the crystal in the lab. This experience was too much, and I couldn't handle it. I couldn't find my real hand! My control was limited to what I was able to see here in this hole of evil.

I closed my eyes, and I could feel my legs give way. I'm not sure how much time passed, but I became aware that someone was watching me. The presence was one with which I had grown up.

“Hello, Eugene." I shuddered at hearing the voice. The name was one I hadn't thought of in years. It was mine before I became who I was now, but only one person ever addressed me that way.

I opened my eyes and found myself face to face with Amos Goodwin.

I glared. It could have been for a split second, or a million years. I had no idea. “Amos.” I wouldn’t even benefit him with a hello.

“What do you think of my home, my dear?”

“I’m not your dear.”

“No, I suppose you're not.” He turned and walked a few feet away, then turned back.

I suddenly realized what was happening. “You’re not a memory. You’re talking to me.” The terror somehow increased. “You’re real.” My voice came out in a whisper as I said the last.

He gave a slight smile. “Do you know what I always wanted as a child, Eugene?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know, and I didn't think I wanted to.

He seemed to be tired, giving a sigh as he spoke. “You.”

My stomach churned as I considered what he was saying. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I said.”

“Let me rephrase that, Amos. How did you ‘want me’?”

“Do I have to explain, Eugene?"

I stormed up to him. Whether he was just an image or not, I was ready to scratch his eyes out of that smug, white face. “Don’t you call me that name again! No one calls me that! It isn’t my name.”

Amos was condescending. "Yet you respond to it… Rose."

I felt faint. It was almost worse to hear the bastard use my chosen name.

“Oh well. It doesn't matter. Soon you will respond the way I want you to." He turned back to the blackness. "Come," he said, holding out his hand.

I didn’t move.

“I said, come.” He snapped his fingers.

“I’m not a dog.”

Again, he turned back. "No, you're not. You fail to realize, however, that I rule here. What you see around us is your new home. You are what I want you to be."

The blackness behind him started moving. It enveloped him and continued advancing toward me.

I felt something in my mind. Something soft, that seemed to brush ever so gently against my consciousness. It was reassuring, and though I could sense no thought, I knew it was someone else, not Amos. It seemed to say that it was there and would help protect me. Had Carla touched the crystal too? I had no idea, and no time to consider anything else, as the blackness enveloped me -- evil, cold, devilish, blackness.

I screamed.

Whatever had touched my mind, swarmed in, and it seemed to embrace me. I still had no idea who it was, but I clung to the hope that Carla had joined me.

Suddenly, the black parted, and I saw a scene playing out before my eyes. Amos wasn't there, but as I looked down at myself, I realized that I was Amos. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. I was on a playground, watching as John and Eugene were playing a game of some kind. We were all in the third grade, and I had no idea how to play, but John threw some type of ball to Eugene, who caught it in some oversized glove. I brought my pale white hand up where I could see it. I was small for a man, and I knew I couldn't go into the sunlight for long. I would burn.

The scene changed. I was home and watching as my father and mother were having fun with my half brother, Fredrik. I hated him. He had everything that I didn't. I felt the hate overwhelm every other emotion I tried to feel.

I saw memory after memory as I grew up, always trying to feel something other than my growing hatred of everyone. The hate was worse, however, when I saw John Carlson. Especially when Eugene was around.

When I was fifty-three years old, I walked into a fast-food restaurant and saw John, Perl, and Eugene, sitting at a table. Eugene beckoned me over. I considered joining them, but John was there. All I felt was hatred, unlike any I had ever felt. I sat down where I could only see Carlson's back.

John always hated me, and he monopolized people. He was so deceptive! He had this fake smile that always fooled people.

I hated him just as much as he hated me, though. I would show him! I let my eye stray down to the table where Carlson was drawing something, but I couldn't make it out what it was.

He showed it to them both, and I could see the awe in their eyes as he explained it. That fake smile and supposed care for everyone. He had them completely under his thumb.

The three got up and left the restaurant. As they walked by me, Eugene smiled at me. I felt a bit better for a moment, then Carlson smiled as he walked by. The bastard was rubbing it in! He had them both, and I had nothing.

When they passed by me outside, I got up and picked up the napkin he had drawn on. It showed a sketch of a space station. He was an engineer, and he designed that type of thing. I softly laughed as I thought about what I could do with this.

The emotions faded as I felt something embrace me again. This time, I heard words, although not a voice. Don’t let it take over. You are Rose -- Not Amos. I’ll help you resist.

I tried to ask who this voice was, but before I could form any words in my mind, I was Amos, and somewhere else.

I was seated at a workbench in my lab. The hatred had come back full force, and I was working with it fueling me. Everything I did was accompanied by a thought of how I was always treated. I was an autistic albino, and that made everyone hate me.

I no longer had any desire to be friends with anyone. Eugene and Perl had spent so much time with John, and he utterly brainwashed them.

My parents were no better. They had allowed Fredrik to monopolize their time and feelings. I had a way to take care of them, however. What I was building would accomplish that. And much more.

I finally finished my programming and pressed enter on my keyboard. It took very little time before my printer finished. I couldn't see what it had made, but I knew it was in a culture I had placed in a Petri dish. I had designed them to have an organic skin, with a simple pair of magnets that would provide power from Brownian motion. It wouldn't take long before it started multiplying. I did not doubt that it would work. After all, I had designed it!

I went over to my fridge and got something to drink, then came back and gazed down at the dish. There was nothing that I could see yet, but I knew it wouldn't be long before I could.

The next morning when I woke up, I went to my lab. I took the Petri dish out of the incubator and inspected it. As I expected, my printer had done a remarkable job. There was a gelatinous mix inside that had ingested all at the culture.

I knew there was little chance that anyone would have my exact DNA, so I scanned it into my computers. Then, I instructed it to ignore anyone who matched it, except to provide health. I injected the bots into my body and waited five days. My hate was fueling my actions now, and there was no more love for anyone. My parents had lied to me. The woman who had claimed to be my mother wasn't. She was Fred's mother, but not mine.

For the first time in several days, I opened the door to my lab secure in the knowledge that I had enough bots to infect two people. I went into the kitchen where my parents would fix their breakfast and put the mix onto the top three plates in the cupboard. I took the top one and fried up some eggs and bacon, plus a few extra ingredients. When my parents came in, they seemed impressed that I had made them breakfast. I enjoyed my breakfast.

I watched fascinated as first my "mother," then my father began to look queasy. A few minutes later, they both slipped from their chairs onto the floor. I happily touched them both with some memory crystals, which quickly started changing colors.

I was mesmerized at the sight of my parent's heads slowly separating from their bodies. I had programmed the bots to make the incisions slowly so that it was excruciating.

I saw my father’s eyes widen as he realized that he was very near death. My faux mother started to scream, but that was quickly cut off as her neck spine severed.

When the severing was complete, I glanced at the crystals in my hands and smiled. I would have fun with those later.

That night, I went into my lab, where the crystals were on the workbench. I smiled at them. Mother and Father were in there.

I had programmed the bots to transfer everything they found in the brain into the crystals. I expected that in so doing, they had moved the 'soul' of both of them into their matrix. I would soon find out.

I reached out to my "mother's" crystals and carefully touched them.

I dove into her memories and was gratified to see that she was, indeed, there. Her life was laid out before me.

I had known that my biological mother wasn't the dark-skinned woman who raised me. A simple genetic test showed that, but I wasn't sure who was.

I saw that, on a trip to visit Fredrik, my father had an affair with one of my brother's young students. She was a Nordic girl, very light, and only seventeen years old.

I was disgusted.

When he got home, he said nothing to my 'mother', although it wasn't long before she found out and pushed a meeting. They arranged that my 'mother' would raise me, and there would be no more contact for me or my father with her. In exchange, my birth mother would receive continual updates about me.

I worked hard for the next two years to create a situation where I was elected leader of Earth. My bots made it a foregone conclusion that I would be as people loved the effects of becoming themselves at the end of puberty and staying there.

I was able to arrange a meeting with my biological mother after that, with no problem. She was somewhat reluctant to agree, but I applied just a bit of pressure, and she complied. I wasn't sure what the outcome of the meeting was going to be, but there were a few options.

She entered my palace in Hawaii, and the guards quickly ushered into my office.

“Well, Mother. How long were you planning on keeping your existence from me?” I challenged immediately.

“It was not my idea to keep you isolated from me, Amos,” she said. “I could understand the wishes of your Father and Mother…”

I cut her off. “She’s not my mother. You are my biological mother!”

“Be that as it may, Amos, I could understand their wishes. I was a one night stand, and other people didn't need to know about me."

“Why didn’t you raise me then?”

“I could never have given you as much as your father did, and he was not going to leave his wife. They had been married for over a century.”

“Yet he had an affair with you. Why do you think that was?” My voice was deadly calm, and I had decided what I was going to do.

“I don't know. I guess your father needed a diversion. People sometimes get bored. Clearly, he didn't want to let go of what he already had."

“Obviously.”

I stood up, indicating that the meeting was over, and saw her to the door.

Once I was confident that she was home, I programmed her bots to make life miserable for her. Just mentally at first, however. I didn't want her to go to a doctor yet.

Just like my parents, or Carlson, she cared only for herself. I wasn’t going to put up with her.

I wrote some new programming and then tested it by putting it into my biological mother. I then summoned her to my palace again.

She sat down, and we began talking. I wanted to get a clear idea of what the bots could do with a person. After we had talked about the last couple of months, I suggested that we go for a walk outside.

We climbed the stairs to the top of the building. From there, a door opened to the ridge of the former volcanic cone.

We stepped out, and my mother was immediately affected by the daylight. Her bots started to change her body before my eyes. She became a small child, losing mass onto the ground, which the bots immediately cleaned. She ran to the edge of a cliff, climbed over the railing, and dove off.

The bots had done precisely as I wanted.

They were a success.

I was ready to distribute the nanobots to the population in general now, but I wanted one more thing. I wanted insurance. I refused to let the rest of the people win, so I intended to prepare a device which would I could activate if I needed to.

I went to my lab and started to build another type of bot. This one would simply eat any carbon-based life form to create more of itself. Because the power generation units in the bots used a magnet, they also needed to produce iron and steel. For this, they would eat refined metal.

I designed these bots to explore the entire biosphere looking for food. If none was, they would go dormant until more arrived. If they produced enough bots, they would then establish a network between them to become intelligent. They would use the mental patterns of any crystals they found on the planet. Still, they were programmed to give my mental patterns dominance over all others, so I would always be in control if I had to activate my fail-safe.

I needed people to help me, and I needed test subjects. The test subjects weren't as necessary as other people or things, but I needed workers.

I was under no illusions that people would help me as I wanted, so I decided I would take what I needed. I programmed some different bots for my purposes and went to a small city in what used to be the southwest United States. I set my craft down in the center of the town and stepped out.

These bots were let loose into the town as soon as I opened my door, so I was looking forward to programming them.

I had put a supply in myself as well. These were to keep me healthy and young, but I gave them a different job as well. If they found themselves in a person with different DNA than me, they would adjust to the new DNA, then start reproducing at a high rate. This process would increase speed geometrically because every subsequent bot would do the same. Once they had a healthy colony in the person, usually about four hours after the initial infestation, they would keep them healthy until I issued my orders.

In Las Vegas, New Mexico, the people recognized me, and I used it to my advantage. I started shaking hands. I didn't enjoy touching other people, but my new supply of bots would take care of any germs these people carried. Even so, I only wanted the touch of one other person, and he wasn’t here.

It wasn't long before they seemed to be wearing down. I knew that supplying the raw material for ten pounds of bots would suck a lot out of them. By necessity, they would use fat and muscle mass.

I pulled a remote out of my pocket and had it send a signal to all of the bots, and the people started grouping around me.

As soon as they were there, I pressed another button, and they froze in place. The only motion was their breathing and occasional blink.

I went around the population, assigning purposes to each person. Some would be domestic help, some security, some builders, some engineers. One particularly attractive young boy, I enhanced to be my toy each night. He looked much like Gene, and with a few modifications, the bots were able to make his DNA match. They also instilled in him a desire to be as feminine as possible.

It wasn’t the same, but with the correct DNA, I could stand it.

It wasn't long before I started working on my plans to get revenge on Carlson.

I went to the safe in my lab and took out the picture of the station that Carlson had drawn for Eugene and Perl. I knew that he was working on getting a team ready to build the station, so I took some of my engineers and readied them to talk to Carlson.

I didn't want him to know my plans yet, but when I finished, I was going to take great pleasure in horrifying him.

I set up a dummy corporation in a few minutes and then sent out my engineers. They purchased the rights to the station, and Carlson never knew what had happened.

I readied my builders, and they built two stations. One was smaller, and I named it N21, which was what Carlson's original blueprints named it. The second one, called N22, used almost the same plans, though it was substantially larger. Rather than twenty-four bays, it had thirty, and each bay was longer. They could each hold fifteen missiles armed with twenty independent guided canisters filled with my doomsday bots. I would not lose.

Suddenly, a feeling of dizziness and exhaustion overwhelmed me, and I was Rose again. Amos and I were standing in the black room. My breathing was heavy, and I had a horrible headache. Absorbing so much of Amos' memories exhausted me. I had to get through this and out of the memories, however.

A moment later, Carla was standing beside me. It had been her! I was ecstatic that she had helped me keep my sense of self throughout this hell.